You notice you are feeling a little bit moodier than normal. Irritable and a bit down, with a hot feeling in your chest that you cannot extinguish. The smallest things annoy you. Your flatmate forgets to wash their dishes, someone forgot to buy milk, you drop something on the floor twice in a row, this goes on for a few days. And then you feel it, the dull ache deep in your lower stomach, which becomes more and more intense like that feeling you get from a dead arm, but transferred to your lower abdomen. You’re also breaking out and you feel bloated, fatigued and genuinely sick. Then, as you curl up on the couch in foetal position with a hot water bottle nursing your tummy, cursing mother nature for dealing you this monthly slap in the face, you switch on the television, and what do you see? An attractive lady in a pad/tampon ad, looking at the camera, sensually even, muttering something about absorbency as she proceeds to strut down the street in a mini skirt, and you think to yourself, ‘I hate this woman’. Period.

In a world where search engines are increasingly becoming the first port of call to find information, Colin Kennedy says serious, rational messages compete poorly with more emotive, conversational and down-to-earth content offered. But content marketing could help change that.

Idealog’s Jonathan Cotton on our oft-misplaced enthusiasm when overhyped technology doesn’t deliver what it promised and why from now on he’ll be taking the next big technology launch with a grain of salt.

This week, AdRoll’s Ben Sharp looks at why creativity is integral to an effective programmatic marketing strategy.

Scoop publisher and editor Alastair Thompson on the disruption of online news advertising and Scoop’s subsequent steps to sustain its platform through the introduction of an ethical paywall, dubbed ‘Operation Chrysalis’.

Michael Goldthorpe discusses the evolution/his changing understanding of direct marketing, otherwise known as DM, from when he was a youngster when those two capitalised letters meant one thing: Danger Mouse. And now, as an adult where technology has changed the game completely, where direct marketing is no longer just a targeted letter sent to your mailbox and finally, he discusses whether the fundamentals have really changed all that much.

According to Pure SEO founder Richard Conway there are a few shady SEO agencies out there that businesses should be wary of. He provides a list of things to look out for to show when the alarm bells should be ringing.

Growth HQ founder James Kemp says that part of the reason why he likes marketing automation is because he’s lazy. And it comes as an added bonus that it has also generated some favourable results for his business.

Business speakers are often stimulating, sometimes boring. Often entertaining, sometimes worthy. Rarely is a speaker overwhelming. But listening to Silicon Valley strategist and entrepreneur Salim Ismail is just that. And he believes many companies are woefully incapable of adapting to a world where almost unimaginable growth trajectories are becoming the norm.

The latest statistics show that New Zealand has more ethnicities than there are countries in the world. So, how do we ensure our marketing can talk to all these different groups in a genuine and authentic way? We need to go beyond looking for differences and instead look for harmonies, says Dean Taylor.

Over the past 11 years, Bridget Lamont has moved her way up the ranks at the green juggernaut of Kiwi retail to eventually become the general manager of marketing. She recently chatted to us about price wars, shouty retail advertising and the perception that Countdown isn’t a Kiwi company.

James Kemp, the director of Growth HQ, says many successful brands tend to be transparent about their businesses and believes that local players should follow suit.

Ben Goodale considers whether automated ad-buying technology is really on the verge of taking over traditional marketing roles or if it’s still a long road to marketing’s robot apocalypse.

Behavioural economics is an increasingly popular topic of conversation, but marketers are only dancing on the periphery of its potential, says Jeff Malone.

Internet users’ unbridled—and growing—love of ad blockers is one of the biggest concerns for the advertising and online publishing industry. So Google proposed a new initiative – called Contributor, which launched last year – for internet users who hate ads so much, they would pay to avoid them. So does it have legs?